


Faded

by Joyful



Category: Glee
Genre: Community: glee_angst_meme, Depression, F/F, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-04
Updated: 2011-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joyful/pseuds/Joyful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Evans makes sad observations about Santana Lopez.  Nobody ever told Sam that Santana was an elleth.  Contains references to Tolkien, but is not a crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faded

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from the angst meme. The prompt said simply, "Brittana. Santana dies from a broken heart." For Blendertest, who will always be my Santana.

For as long as he could remember, Sam loved Tolkien. Middle Earth was his first love before he'd ever heard of _Avatar._ He'd read all the books: _The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Unfinished Tales, The Lost Tales, The Silmarillion,_ which was his favorite, and he'd read all of the appendices. Well, technically he hadn't read them all, because he was dyslexic, and Tolkien used a lot of long words, so he had the whole world as a collection of books on tape. That way the long words didn't get all tangled up. Sam loved Middle Earth, but he didn't expect to meet elves at McKinley. The concept of 'fading' had always confused Sam. He didn't understand how somebody could fade; just disappear into nothingness because of pain and sadness. Then he met Santana Lopez.

It didn't happen all at once. At the very end of Junior year, Brittany Susan Pierce was killed in a car accident. Santana Lopez had been driving, and was unhurt. Then summer vacation happened and Sam didn't really see Santana again until fall, when Mr. Schue said it was time to try out for glee club again. She'd lost weight. She'd never been fat, but she'd always had all the right curves in all the right places. When Homecoming rolled around, her Cheerios uniform hung off of her. Like somebody had dressed a Halloween skeleton as a cheerleader. Her skin was pale and ashy, and her eyes looked almost sunken in. They seemed dead when he caught them; the spark she had always carried had faded. Her eyes were dull and flat. When Christmas came, she couldn't even be bothered to act like a bitch. She just went through life, pretending not to cry every time she saw a Christmas decoration. All the fight and fire had left Santana Lopez. Sam realized for the first time that watching the fire go out of a person wasn't like putting out a campfire with water. When you threw water on a campfire it hissed and popped, and the smoke bellowed dark and heavy. A fire fought when it was put out by water, making sure you knew it was dying. With Santana, it was more like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, and the fire just...ceased burning.

She got sick in February, right around Valentine's Day. Sam assumed she was just skipping school to avoid seeing the construction paper hearts everywhere until Quinn showed up and said Santana had pneumonia. Pneumonia sucked, but it wasn't that bad. People got pneumonia all the time, and then got better. Except Santana didn't get better. She got sicker, she lingered, and she slipped away.

People were confused and hurt and scared and shocked. How does a seemingly healthy eighteen-year-old girl just die from pneumonia? There were grief counselors at the school, like there had been after the car accident. And medical experts to make sure there wasn't some weird extra-fatal strain of pneumonia, and even a bunch of people in haz-mat suits who Coach Sylvester had hired to scrub down the building. Everyone was talking about how Santana Lopez had died from pneumonia, and wasn't it sad and weird? But Sam knew the secret. Santana hadn't died from pneumonia, she'd just stopped pretending to be alive. She'd faded.

*end*


End file.
